God With Us

Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us. Isaiah 7:14 (with a little help from the Septuagint)

O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain; O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, and be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! Isaiah 40:9

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. Isaiah 60:1

The Prince Of Peace

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6

Comfort Ye

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. Isaiah 40:1-4

The Lord's Mouth Has Spoken It

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Isaiah 40:5

Single King

I spent eight hours in the Marriott Hotel near LAX Friday night, waiting to collect Kathy, who was coming in from Hawaii at 5:30 this morning. Last night the server in the sports bar graciously directed me to the tastiest item on the menu (the buffalo chicken salad). Four front desk folks wished me goodnight, with big smiles, as I walked past after dinner. When I called an hour ago to say I'd left my appointment book in my room, the woman who answered the phone in housekeeping sent someone to look and called back within ten minutes to say they'd found it.

My first thought, and it's a correct one, is that it's a well-run place. So bravo! But here's a sacramental explanation. I was staying there thanks to a church friend who secured the room using her late husband's Marriott points and put my name on the reservation along with his. When I arrived and got my key from the woman at the front desk, she said in passing that my friend hadn't checked in yet. Well, that depended on how you looked at it, since he's currently making up a room and stocking the minibar with well-strained wines strained clear for his beloved wife (see Isaiah 25 and John 14 for the details). On his last night of conscious life, after a year-long battle against brain cancer, he asked me how I was doing. He was the very soul of the hospitality with which, last night, a bustling inn full of strangers was alive.

A Prayer On Both Your Houses

E. J. Dionne, Jr. (that's Isaiah at right, not E.J.) argues that the increase in the percentage of Americans who say they aren't religious is related to the pervasive association of Christianity with the evangelical, politically activist, generally Republican faction of the faith:

Religion is always corrupted when it gets too close to political power. It's possible to win a precinct caucus and lose your soul, to mistake political victory for salvation itself.

While he may be right, he overlooks what happened a generation or two ago to the mainline Protestant denominations, which began to lose adherents as they become more closely associated with so-called liberal causes such as opposition to the Vietnam war and equity for women and gay and lesbian people. Would Dionne say that religion can be corrupted if it advocates too aggressively for politicians who support green energy and world peace instead of (as in the case of the evangelical cohort) oppose abortion?

As an alternative to spending its time and energy worrying about the swinging ecclesiastical pendulum, I would like to see the church simultaneously become more knowledgeable about politics and policy and yet less emotionally engaged in outcomes, which actually aren't our job. Studying Matthew's account of the Resurrection this Easter, I was struck by what happened to the guards (possibly Roman, but more likely working for the temple authorities) when the angel rolled away the stone in front of Jesus's tomb:

⁴For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.

Likewise, in Isaiah's Fourth Servant Song, which Christians take to be an anticipation of Christ, the prophet says:

Kings shall shut their mouths because of him.

That would be something to see, huh? Secular authority staring divinity in its face and being struck dumb with terror. Obviously the church has spent much of its life promoting fear and guilt, often in a self-serving and emotionally destructive way. And yet there is still something to be said for the fear of God (as opposed to fear of the Pope or parish priest). After all, continues Isaiah, God's ways are not our ways nor God's thoughts our thoughts. It seems to me that politics at its best is inherently cultural, the gospel inherently countercultural. So perhaps the church should be less focused on trying to refashion the state in its image than on modeling a radically different way of living, interacting, and building and sustaining community even in the throes of conflict.

Some in the church love justice, righteousness, and mercy so much that they find it unbearable when governments and political leaders don't do all they can do promote these virtues. The difficulty is that prophecy can breed pride, even zealotry. So today, prophetic Christendom is as fractured as politics, with one faction promoting justice for those who have been born and the other for those who have merely been conceived. Don't we see that in our divisions, we are aping the very secular leaders we so often scorn?

Lenten Flowers, Candles, And The Cross

One of the simplest and greatest blessings of working in the church is that, late on a midweek morning, when no one's there, I can wander from my office over to the church.

Having a church next door is good.

During our all-school Holy Eucharist service this morning, celebrated in thanksgiving for Cyril of Jerusalem, who in the 4th century stood up courageously for the orthodox faith in spite of people's lies and self-dealing, 800 students, faculty, and staff nearly raised the roof with their energy. That's the St. John's middle school choir under the direction of Lori Speciale, rehearsing my favorite hymn ("Come Down, O Love Divine") before the service.

By 10:30, the students were back in class and the altar cleared, enabling silence to gather again. Our church is less than six years old. While that's a lot of praying, proclaiming, and singing so far, the space still feels new. During the week on this busy campus, when morning chapels are over, it calls out to be visited and used. The candles and prie-diex, recently installed in the Chrysostom Chapel by our Altar Guild, are a considerable blessing. It's easier being in an empty church when there's something to do -- light a candle, kneel, say a prayer, or read a little scripture, such as this bit from Isaiah, appointed by the church for use at midday, when the sun is high and unblinking, the tensions of the day perhaps at their greatest:

O God, you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are fixed on you; for in returning and rest we shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be our strength. [26:3; 30:15]

A Prophet For Then And Now

Isaiah, the prophet of the Christian season of Advent, lived in the 8th century before Christ and advised a scared young king named Ahaz, who had the bright idea of leveraging the Assyrians against the Syrians to keep his tiny kingdom of Judah safe. Isaiah advised him to trust in God instead of diplomacy or military power:

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. [9:6, NRSV]

It would be a little like President Bush saying to Secretary Gates that then Russians and al-Qaeda were coming, and Gates replying, "Wait for the messiah; trust not in B-2s and the CIA." Hebrew Testament potentates usually found prophets annoying as best.

As far as Christians are concerned, Ahaz would've had to wait 740 years for the promise to be kept, in the form of the Bethlehem baby. In "Messiah," G. F. Handel set the King James Version of Isaiah 9:6 to such sublime music that the words can seem to belong exclusively to Christ's story. (That's world-class bass-baritone Robbie Britt at right, appearing in a recent Nixon Library performance of selections from Handel's oratorio.) Yet Christians' challenge is to enjoy the wonder of Isaiah's prophecy without diminishing the significance in his own time of his powerful vision of peace and God's saving power.

My church friend Randall Lanham (above) deftly walked that frontier while appearing as the great prophet in my 5th grade religion classes at St. John's. Randall's message for the children: "God always keeps his promises," whether the Hebrew Testament's promise of justice and righteousness or the New Testament's of a Christ to save all creation.